The National Writing Project
A NATE grass-roots educational research project
  • Home
    • Privacy Policy
    • NWP Blog >
      • Weekly write 1
      • Weekly write 2
      • Weekly Write 3
      • Weekly write 4
      • Weekly write 5
      • Weekly write 6
      • Weekly write 7
      • Weekly write 8
      • Weekly write 9
      • Weekly write 10
      • Weekly Write 11
      • Weekly Write 12
      • Weekly Write 13
      • Weekly Write 14
      • Weekly Write 15
      • Weekly Write 16
      • Weekly write 17
    • NWP Gallery
    • How It Works
    • Background & Principles
    • Who's involved >
      • Morlette Lindsay
    • Find out more
    • Updates >
      • Directors' report 2015
      • Directors' report 2016
      • Directors' report 2017
      • Directors' report 2018
      • Group leaders' review 2017
  • Courses
    • 2016 Residential
    • Belsey Bridge Oct 2016
    • 2017 Residential
    • Texts used at 2017 residential
    • Tate Modern 16 Aug 2018
    • Whitechapel workshop
    • NWP 2019 writing retreat
    • 2018 Residential
    • Metaphoraging
  • Digested reads
    • John Dixon
    • Harold Rosen
    • Raymond Carver
    • Janet Emig
    • James Britton >
      • Britton Anthology
  • Research
    • Publications >
      • The Rights of the Writer
      • Making Room for Writing
      • 41 reasons why you should join a writing group
      • The benefits of freedom
      • In our own hands
      • What has writing ever done for us?
      • PowerPoint presentations
      • Diving into Writing
      • Folding paper, opening words
      • Book of the Project >
        • Free writing
        • Notes on publication
      • Harold Rosen lecture 27 June 2015
      • Writing spaces
      • Writing teachers
      • Symposium slides 17.11.2016
      • If we teach writing ...
      • TED talk 18 March 2017
      • TESS article 2017
      • Affordances
    • Poesis, literature and learning
    • 4 benefits of teachers' writing groups
    • Teacher Testimonies >
      • Teacher Testimony 2015
    • In defence of creative writing
    • 40 years of writing pedagogy
    • DIY classroom research
    • Recommended reading and links
  • In Your Classroom
    • NWP in the classroom
    • Writing ideas >
      • Using Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' >
        • Developing ideas: Garth Nix
        • paper shapes
        • Using film
        • Using drama
        • Postcard conversations
        • 1a Gothic Underground >
          • 1b Gothic lexicon
          • 2a Gothic body-parts
          • 2b Gothic passages
          • 3 Gothic investigation
      • New ideas 2015 >
        • Only connect
        • Answer
        • Collections and connections
        • Sherlock extracts
        • Characters from names
        • Developing Characters
        • Flip books
        • Small books
        • Names (A) >
          • Naming stones >
            • Geological terms
            • Stones writing example
          • Names and images (D)
          • Names in lists (B)
          • Further reading (C)
          • Examples (E)
        • Collections
        • Colours >
          • Colour names
          • More colours
          • Colour poem
        • Door tags
      • Quick writes >
        • Slightly longer exercises >
          • The world's a zoo
          • Word starter
          • Metaphors
        • Longer structured exercises
        • Short texts for quick writes
      • Collaborative >
        • Wendell Berry
      • Memories
      • Responding >
        • Ideas to develop response partnership in classrooms
    • Writing journeys
    • Writing histories >
      • Snapshots
    • Writing Journals >
      • Prompts for writing journals
      • Advice on journals 2014
    • Examples of Writing >
      • Writing from photos
      • How NWP works
      • Teachers' writing and reflection
      • Isabel Palmer >
        • Nightlife
        • Poppies
      • MK NWP
      • Whodunit writing
      • Writing alongside
  • Get Involved
    • Visit a group
    • Join an NWP Writing Group
    • Start an NWP Writing Group
    • Write Together Online >
      • NWP Group Login
    • A month's writing challenge
  • Contact NWP

Making time for yourself

4/8/2017

0 Comments

 
​On July 26th, I joined NWP’s newest community writing group in Stevington – a company of teachers, ex-teachers and others. This was the group’s fourth meeting.

First we scribbled down our ‘notes to self’ and shared a few – a mixture of the trivial, worldly and ontological – the doubts about the day of the week, insurance, families,  Stow on the Wold – as well as  reminders to ‘take time and make time’ for ourselves. We often use writing to get a grip, to hold on, to remember. But in the trusted writing group there is time to let go, to collide with the words and thoughts of others – to allow ourselves to go with what we thought we heard, even if we weren’t sure, and to surprise ourselves into – or out of - ourselves.
Then we bounced ideas off poetic fragments (see weekly write 9) and used whatever had risen personally, or had coalesced in conversation, as a springboard for 15 minutes’ writing. The effectiveness of the resultant reflections, fantasies and memoirs, depended in part on how writers were able to ‘jump in’ and ‘hold’ their images and tones together as the writing flowed.

​Authentic writing can become distinctive and compelling when writers
  • let their 'colours' diffuse unconsciously,
  • allow themselves to let phrases and ideas lead them,
  • and resist the distraction of too much premature ‘in-flight editing’. 
Later, a degree of distance – provided by sensitive listeners or one’s own attentive ear – often reveals where the voice wobbles, where things are too fragmented or over-written.

​It’s one process amongst many.
Picture
Picture
Picture
On July 29th, NWP Bedford community writing group met in the Higgins museum to see how the curators had displayed their work alongside the exhibits which provoked it (see photos).
​
The group has met eight times this year, and is practised in using the collections to re-collect, in discovering human stories behind artefacts and in animating inanimate objects. For some in this group, writing together is a sacred space for themselves and a way of holding on to what matters. Several use writing to gather and shape thoughts and feeling about personal and issues.  A few are several chapters in to imagining and recreating family histories from the inside out, but for the majority, there is little writing between the monthly 2-hour sessions. Hence how treasured these opportunities are.
Picture

​Victorian mourning necklace


A chain around the neck. Unremitting black, chiselled, hard. No light reflecting. Fettering rope of rings and blocks. But look closer and just see the delicacy of tendrils etched on the faces of the pendant lozenges. Parody of diamonds. She snaps the clasp at her neck, links angular against her skin. Heavy too. Four more seasons of this. Chin up, shoulders braced, grim set of her mouth. Swish of black crepe skirts as she sweeps silently from room to room, muffled, squeezed in her public face of mourning. Still shackled after all. 

If you're a teacher who'd like to write with a group, please click here to join one. If you'd like to experience writing alongside others, click here to join the group at the Tate Modern on Tuesday 15 August. If you can't do either of those things but you'd still like to challenge yourself to write on your own, why not click here to take up a month's writing challenge or click here to try out one of the 'weekly writes'?

Enjoy the summer!



Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The NWP blog

    Thoughts & updates from the National Writing Project in the UK.

    Archives

    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    July 2013
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    App
    Grammar
    Nate
    National Curriculum
    Policy
    Research
    Teaching
    Video
    Writing Groups

    RSS Feed

    The National Writing Project UK is a research project supported by NATE,
the National Association for the Teaching of English. Contact NWP.
Picture
Picture